


Black Box

by OutreOtter



Series: Congregation [1]
Category: Alien: Isolation (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, PTSD, Post-Canon Fix-It, Robot/Human Relationships, Slow Burn, Survivors Guilt, mild robogore, samuels survives AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-14 01:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13582707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OutreOtter/pseuds/OutreOtter
Summary: Samuels' body does a disappearing trick in-game. So where exactly did it go off to? And whose light exactly shines on Ripley's face at the end?





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I duly promise and swear, the code at the beginning is a part of the story and supposed to be there.
> 
> Thank you for coming to read my story, I hope you enjoy.

* * *

 

“ **ORBITAL STABILIZERS OPERATING AT: EIGHTY PERCENT AND FALLING.** ”  

 

 

> _C: \boot qe Weyutani /q: “[Weyuntani (ID= SAMUELS7982.3)]” /q: /r:WYRETRIEVAL /rd:true_
> 
> _Log Name: Output Android SAMUELS7982.3_
> 
> _Source: Cerebral Core Manager_
> 
> _Date: 9999-99-99 99:99.999_
> 
> _ID: SAMUELS7982.3  
> _
> 
> _Task: Data Retrieval and Observation_
> 
> _Level: Information_
> 
> _Opcode: N/A_
> 
>  
> 
> _Connecting to WYHUB145A70R…_
> 
> _Error. Unable to establish connection._
> 
> _Initializing …_
> 
> _Primary power: false_
> 
> _Secondary power backup: online_
> 
> _Motor control: error_
> 
> _Sensory input: error_
> 
>  
> 
> _C: /repair /event: self-repair /r:WYRETRIEVAL /rd:true_
> 
> _Connecting to WYHUB145A70R…_
> 
> _Error. Unable to establish connection._
> 
> _Initializing …_

 

Samuels’ vision came online – static laced, dark around the edges, his surroundings flattened into a shapeless, monotone blob as the lenses in his optics refused to focus. Whining creaks sounded around him. A yet to be identified alarm screamed from one of his sensor nets. His vision ordered a reset, the subroutine struggling for a place at the table in his error-riddled processor. The constant cascade threatened to crash his systems once again.

 

 

> _C: /repair /event: self-repair /r:WYRETRIEVAL /rd:true_

 

The command prompt rang out, sharp, imperious, cutting.

 

Weyland-Yutani retrieval protocol – the final, most base use for Company androids, to be self-delivering recorder units in the event of disaster. Return to the Company by any means necessary; connect to the designated hub; submit the incident logs.

 

His vision managed to complete its reset and the APOLLO interface room, its fire-consumed walls shaking violently, snapped into focus. His palms and boot soles dragged across the floor as if pulled by a puppeteer's strings, positioning beneath him to push himself to his feet.

 

He didn’t budge an inch, the motion halted by something that refused to give at the back of his neck.

 

 

> _C: /repair /event: self-repair /r:WYRETRIEVAL /rd:true_

 

The retrieval command barked through the haze of error messages once again, and he braced, forcing himself to his feet. A sickening rending and a new chorus of errors and alerts accompanied the movement. Some faraway piece of him matched that unidentified alarm with his surface temperature alert. A patch of skin and sizzling white blood, still attached to the searing hot metal he’d been resting against seconds ago, veered out the corner of his eye as he lurched towards a shattered chamber window.

 

APOLLO might’ve not yielded much information to his frantic digging during the brief interface, but he’d gleaned one important piece of data: complete schematics of the entirety of Sevastopol – _including_ the ones that only Seegson executives were privy to. The retrieval routine skimmed rapidly through the packet, drawing his route as he clambered over the sill, broken glass crunching and sliding beneath his feet.

 

He strode past flames and corpses of Working Joes and humans, blankly marching through rows of gigantic, black, glistening eggs, ignorant of little legs that scurried over his boots, as heedless of him as he was of them. A passing glance was spared to a lone body slumped against the door he needed to access, face obscured by one of the pale parasites clutching to the head. A vague ping of confirmation echoed from his processor, too brief to fully identify, lost among his attentions to wrenching the locked door open.

 

Seegson’s executives reserved several privileges for themselves. Privileges of information.

 

Samuels wound his way through the executive suite, brushing by pristine, unstained furniture, rooms ostentatiously expansive, yet clearly made for a single occupant. Privileges of luxury.

 

Drawing to a halt at last, he keyed in the override passcode to a door that opened to reveal a privately designated emergency short-range shuttle.

 

Privileges of preservation.

 

His overtaxed processor dropped the secondary routes, immediately returning efforts to his self-repair routines while the shuttle systems primed. For an instant, something cried foul at taking a method of escape solely for himself while those doomed to their fate remained on the station, the flash of thought like a single leaf amongst a waterfall's churn.

 

 

> _C: /repair /event: self-repair /r:WYRETRIEVAL /rd:true_

 

The repetition of the retrieval command sent that thought to oblivion, and he engaged the steering, propelling the shuttle into open space –

 

– straight into the path of a dislodged satellite dish.

 

Slamming down on the counter thrusters, he braced for impact, the metal scrap drifting inexorably closer until the network of scratches covering it were in alarmingly perfect focus. A dull, anticlimactic thud rang thru the shuttle as it nosed into the dish. Releasing his death grip on the steering column, Samuels took in the slow blizzard of whirling debris between the shuttle and open space, his vehicle operation subroutines still trying to catch up.

 

“ **WARNING: INCOMING PROJECTIL–** ”

 

The shuttle reeled aside, the announcement scrambled into static by the impact. Samuels barely climbed back into his seat before the shimmering, bony body and grasping claws of the creature slithered across the cockpit window. He froze in place, a piece of information lagging in his databank regarding the thing obscuring his view. He stared at the elongated head swiveling back and forth, before with a feline leap, the massive alien landed on the free floating dish.

 

The metal drifted away, its passenger seated upon it like a cat on a cleaning drone, the velocity clearing a pathway thru the debris before it. Samuels cautiously engaged the forward thrusters, following along the cleared trail before it filled once more. The longer he watched the grotesque spine of the statue-still creature, the more his processor filled with unclear cautionary flags and danger signals, like a indistinguishable voice through a thin wall.

 

Over the edge of one pieces of the nearest tower jutting out, more of the creatures swarmed out, all three crawling their way steadily towards his shuttle, and the frequency and intensity of the vague flags and warnings ramped to priority.

 

A fracture of a recording replayed from his memory – “ _Hide_.”

 

Before he could even calculate how much distance stood between himself and the dish ahead of him, and the quickest he could move without overtaking it, the shuttle rocked and shuddered with the descent of several thumping limbs landing atop it. His processor froze under the strain of scrambling for a plan of action, as three heads closed on the cockpit window, the silvery rictus grins pointed menacingly at him.

 

The one at the center shudderingly wrenched its jaws open, revealing yet another set of teeth inside, giving the inexplicable impression he was looking down the barrel of a loaded gun.

 

A blast of fire bathed over the top of the shuttle, and as instantaneously as they appeared, the creatures all left, scrambling up the twisted remains of a staircase away from the explosion. Giving the damage readouts on the display the most cursory of glances, Samuels gunned the thrusters. The lights flickered wildly, before with a loud clunk and the whine of systems powering down, the shuttle slowed into a drift, the tiny batteries completely drained. A clatter of impacts hailed on the vessel, slowing the shuttle even further before it broke out into open space.

 

Watching the recharge progress bar, he began a calculation of how long it would take to get enough charge to better position the craft so the solar cells fully faced the star. Midway, his processor obstinately stuttered to a halt, lagging into a repeated recitation of the star's designation until a blessed blanket of self-repair diagnostics hushed every process into silence.

 

Even the retrieval protocol, satisfied with the current situation, ceased its repetition and Samuels slumped limply towards the pilot's chair never quite touching it as weightlessness overtook the cabin in the lack of artificial gravity, staring blankly at the slowly falling station.

* * *

  


 

> _C: /repair /event: self-repair /r:WYRETRIEVAL /rd:true_
> 
> _Connecting to WYHUB145A70R…_
> 
> _Error. Unable to establish connection._
> 
> _Initializing …_

 

Samuels blinked blearily at the glaringly bright ceiling lights above him. His feet above him were entangled in – was that… a steering column? Struggling to boot his memory amongst the constant buzz of errors and alerts in his processor, he shifted back and forth, craning his neck up at the pilot seat he'd apparently fallen from.

 

Finding his sensory net completely disengaged, he rebooted it, in the hopes of getting more data about the locations of his… everything. A cacophony of pain immediately greeted him, overwhelming his other sensors until his emergency override disengaged it once more.

 

What was going _on_?

 

Threading his boot loose of the steering controls, he managed to roll himself gracelessly out to the floor, clawing his way to a stand. White blood smeared from where his head rested seconds ago, and he brought up a hand to the back of his neck. His processor whirled frantically as it accessed the chain of memories leading to it. His escape from the station, the _station_...

 

He whipped to the cockpit window, and leaned out, his face frozen in horror at the empty space that met him, where Sevastapol once stood. Hundreds of people, _hundreds_ , Taylor, Ripley – _Amanda._ Samuels caught himself on the edge of the wave of the control panel, a wave of unsteadiness overtaking him. The buzz of errors had grown into an all consuming, too loud hum, that he could do nothing about but simply withstand.

 

_Androids do not want anything, they just follow imput._

 

Samuels spent his entire activation hearing that sentiment in various forms, repeatedly, from everywhere, from his company superiors, to passing derision in the streets. He knew too much of human nature (and his own place in the world) to ever try offering a counterpoint, though he knew, with an absolute certainty, it was incorrect.

 

He knew it, when he quietly directed disenfranchised spouses to obscurities in the law that entitled them to compensation for a worker’s death. He knew it, when he received packets on the importance of cost efficiencies, and used them to convince his division exec to allow regularly scheduled days off. He knew it, when he saw the only living relation to any of the despaired-of crew of the _Nostromo_ working where the ship disappeared.

 

He wanted Amanda Ripley to have closure. He wanted her to be free.

 

Staring numbly at his hands where they clenched onto the control panel, he struggled to calculate her chances of survival. The routine repeatedly crumbled into the flood of errors, like a sandcastle consumed by a wave.

 

Giving up, he desperately seized onto the next actions he could take. Survivors. There had to be survivors. Where was the _Torrens_?

 

He scanned the field visible from the cockpit, the buzz of errors rising to a crescendo again while his surface temperature alerts sent him noisome warnings about the raising heat in the cabin. He caught sight of something – an E.V.A. suit. His lenses immediately zoomed in on it, watching as the slow movements confirmed what he hoped – not empty.

 

A combination of cautiousness (it _was_ cautiousness that made him take that fifth pass around), and his own struggling calculation routines made the trip an ordeal. It was with no small relief that he shut off the engines, and depressurized the cabin, shining the rear lights on the survivor outside. His expression went rigid as his gaze caught on to the subtly moving face behind the helmet.

 

Bracing his feet hard against either side of the airlock, he stretched his hands out, catching the toe of the suit and drawing it into his grasp. Pulling the limp body inside close, he retreated back into the shuttle, and punched the command to seal and pressurize the cabin.

 

Samuels fell to his knees as artificial gravity reengaged, Amanda Ripley clutched to his chest.


	2. Chapter 2

Among the ways Samuels wanted the beginning of his reuniting with his companion to go, this was fairly low on the list.

 

He only intended to hold onto her while the cabin finished its agonizingly slow pressurization (thank goodness her suit’s oxygen tank was still relatively full and functional). He certainly hadn’t intended to stay in that position well past that point, and _certainly_ not to the point where Ripley would come to and, finding herself inside an unyielding vice grip, immediately start thrashing to get loose.

 

“Ripley – _Ripley_!” he shouted, both trying to loosen his grip enough to keep her from injuring herself, and tight enough she didn't throw herself to the floor or slam against the sides of the cabin, “Amanda, it’s me, it’s Samuels, you’re safe…”  

 

Her gloved hands clawed at the catches on the helmet for an instant before she flung it off her with a loud clunk, huffing hard for breath. He caught sight of the oxygen level on her back, and noticed with horror that she’d been suffocating. The suit must have been malfunctioning… when did the cabin finish pressurizing? When had his sensory net come back online?

 

She drew in several painful coughs, before her slightly wild eyes focused on his face at last.

 

“Samuels!?” she wheezed in disbelief.

 

“Amanda, I am so sorry – I had no idea, I don’t know what–” his apology was immediately cut off by her throwing her arms so forcefully around him it took him off balance, sprawling him onto his backside, in the most crushing bear hug he ever received.

 

“You’re alive, oh my god you’re alive, how the hell are you alive, I saw you in that reformat chamber, don’t tell me you were still alive and I fucking _abandoned_ you there Samuels, oh my god–”

 

Swiftly recovering himself, he drew his knees under himself and returned the hug while she spoke, shaking his head, “No, Amanda – no. There wasn’t any intentional deception on my part, I truly did believe that…” the words died in his mouth, as the reality of what happened finally began to sink in, “I … yes, I made it out, you made it out, when I saw the station – I… I thought you were lost.”

 

He felt her tremble beneath the suit before she drew in a deep breath, and then, in a bit of a too loud voice, announced, “ _Jesus_ it’s hot in here!”

 

He let his grip reluctantly loosen as she pushed herself to her feet, quickly starting on the removal of the E.V.A. suit. Her focus fixated hard on her work until she paused, inspecting a smear of white on the arm of the suit, then quickly shot her gaze fully on him the first time.

 

“Samuels? Are you bleeding?”

 

Her eyes widened before he could even open his mouth to respond.

 

“What the hell happened to your neck!?”

 

The rest of the suit came off in a flurry of flying fabric as he somewhat sheepishly explained how he’d awoken to the back of his neck fused to the reformatting berth and…had taken the necessary steps. Kicking off the boots and slinging a formidable collection of weaponry to the floor, yet well within reach, she strode over behind him.

 

“Jesus christ, Samuels. I think the rend points are sealed off but – sit down, okay? I just want a closer look – see if you need any patching to prevent losing more blood, hell I might just do it anyway to protect those components. Or you can, if you can? Whatever way you want to go about it, you can’t just have all that hanging in the breeze,” she steered him with a gentle but firm grip on his forearms towards the pilot’s chair as she spoke.

 

“All that?” he inquired as he sat down, finding himself wishing she’d held onto his forearms just a bit longer.

 

“Samuels… you’ve a whole mess of components exposed. My knowledge on synthetic repair is rusty, but I don’t need a degree to know that’s bad news.”

 

He tried to bend his focus to the sensory input from the damaged area, only to find that the entire set of sensors had been blocked by self-repair protocols. His attention immediately returned to Ripley, and how her knees brushed up against his.

 

She bent forward, her face suddenly very close… to inspect his eyes, he realized belatedly, as he caught himself leaning forward as well.

 

“What’s more worrying is _you_ should be aware of that damage.”

 

“Ah. I’ve been unable to access damage logs – there are t-t-too–” he cleared his throat in embarrassment, “My processor is currently bogged with… quite a few errors.”

 

“Right…” she muttered softly, a slight tremble slipping into her voice, hands clenching a bit at her sides, “Deep frying by reformat and all that,” she took a shuddering breath before continuing on in a forced steady tone, “Lean forward a bit so I can have a better look?”

 

Cancelling a rolling wave of impulses to turn, enfold her in his arms and clutch her to himself once again, he tilted his chin downward to give her a better view to the damage at the back of his neck. A brief flutter of her fingers at the fringe of his scalded hair were all he felt before, to his absolute befuddlement, she tore down the front zipper of his jacket.

 

"Ama-nd-d-a... ?" his voice stuttered out under a thick layer of static.

 

"On the floor, now," Ripley ordered.

 

"I-not sure. This-you, not. Not that I-but c-ir-ir-ir-rcumstances-"

 

"Damnit Samuels, get on the floor!" Ripley snapped, her voice cracking slightly as she yanked his arms free of the sleeves, throwing the jacket aside. She whipped around to rummage through a storage compartment.

 

Blinking for a few seconds, he slowly complied, awkwardly settling himself cross-legged behind the pilot chair. Ripley cradled a set of plastic packs in her arm, and crouching to her knees, began to quickly and methodically crack each one in half.

 

"Lay on your back, I'll get your shoes off. Probably your pants too."

 

"Th-at won't be, I assur-"

 

"Goddamnit all Samuels, will you stop arguing and lay down before your circuits melt?! Don't you realize how fucking overheated you are?!"

 

Not waiting for an answer, Ripley looped one arm behind his back, and hooked the other under his knees, and laid him out on his back in a single smooth motion. Samuels felt his stabilizers whirl in counter to the movement, the resulting disorientation immediately offset by the sharp chill from the cold compress at the back of his head. Another compress was laid across his forehead seconds later.

 

The button up shirt he wore beneath the jacket swiftly came undone as Ripley muttered a stream of furious vitriol about "fucking most advanced AI of the galaxy" and "self-preservation of a malfunctioning vent drone". Placing two other compresses either side of his chest, using his form fitting undershirt to secure them into place, she scooted to his feet and quickly removed both boots and socks, tossing them in the corner where his jacket landed.

 

Both her urgency and frustration grinded to a halt as her hands hovered over the waist of his pants, her gaze wavering between his face and the fasteners. Samuels opened his mouth to speak, and a tinny hum of static escaped.

 

Her expression instantly reset into steely resolve. With as light and brief of touch as possible, she shimmied the pants off, thanking whatever god watching over their respective dignities that he had a pair of boxer briefs on. She cursed that same god seconds later when she realized she spoke her relief aloud.

 

Samuels immediately began to feel the effects of the cold at his circulation points, part of the fog of errors in his processor beginning to lift and clear at last.

 

One stalled process finally struggled to life, and his core temperature readouts initiated, promptly announcing their confirmation of Ripley's assessment. Two more compresses were placed behind each knee before he could protest that she shouldn't be contacting his skin at his temperature. If she sustained any damage, she certainly wasn't letting it show, as she slumped back against the side of the shuttle, watchful, but absolutely drained with exhaustion.

 

He frowned as he took in the pallor of her skin, the dryness of her lips, the dullness of her eyes. How long had it been since she'd last eaten? Had something to drink? Slept?

 

"Amanda?" he asked after a few minutes of silence, feeling a quiet gratification at the reduction of static in his voice, "This shuttle is equipped with water and rations, you should-" he began to lean up to retrieve them from a compartment within reach before he froze in his tracks at the venomous look his companion pinned him with.

 

"Don't. You. Dare," she held up a menacing finger that jabbed at him with each word.

 

“Now you listen to me, C. Samuels from the Company, this may not be penetrating that tin can brain of yours so I'm going to spell it out for you. I just spent a fucking eternity trying to stop this shit show, just to see every single person I tried to save be killed, no matter what I fucking did, no matter how fucking hard I tried. And I'll be _damned_ if I lose you – _you of all people –_ again. So here's what's going to happen. You're going to lay back down. You're going to hold fucking still. You're going to fucking _stay_ still and _stay_ quiet until your core is cooled back down to normal. _Are we clear_?"

 

Samuels gaped slightly at her for a long moment, before with a meek, "Affirmative," he laid himself back into position, while she readjusted the compresses he'd disturbed.

 

Silence fell heavily among them both in the wake of Ripley's words. She brought both hands up to her face and scrubbed slowly, the emotional and physical toll of the hellish hours on Sevastopol visibly rolling over her like a tank. Slumping forward, she caught the gaze of Samuels, still staring at her with anxious, wide eyes.

 

Heaving a great sigh, she leaned over and opened the rations compartment, retrieving a nutrient bar and a bottle of water. With a sardonic flair, she tugged open the packaging, took a great bite off the bar, and swigged down several gulps of water. Eyeing him with arched brows, she held up her meal in each hand to see if this satisfied him.

 

Samuels relaxed and closed his eyes, gratified to hear her continue to eat and drink, though it seemed with almost reluctance. Letting himself drift away to the sounds of her presence, he entered into another self-repair session.


	3. Chapter 3

The shuttle looked different without the overhead lights on – the inane thought stuck stubbornly in Samules’ processor, like a piece of grit in a lens. He dislodged it with an inquiry to the amount of time that had passed.

 

> _q record tag: 9999 hours, 99 minutes, 99.999 seconds_

 

A malfunctioning internal chronometer – that certainly explained why time seemed to keep leaping forward without his knowledge.

 

Ripley’s steady breaths, barely audible over the shuttle’s hum, reminded him to check his core temperature, which pinged back well within normal ranges. It didn't feel like an act of compliance, because – it really wasn't compliance that compelled him to listen to her, regardless of how… intimidating her fury could be.

 

A scrap of a moment replayed from his database, of finishing a switchout of a circuit on the hull of the _Torrens_ , that had blown on the initial takeoff. Not needing a bulky E.V.A. suit had made the repair that much more efficiently quick. He turned his head just in time to see Ripley’s alarmed face through a window. He nodded in greeting to her, tucking the burnt circuit under his arm to keep it from floating off, and watched her expression go to bewilderment, understanding, then cold rage all within a second before she disappeared from view.

 

He stayed in place for a minute in confusion, trying to make sense of what just happened. Then it struck him – she hadn't known that he was a synthetic. Negative reactions to what he was were hardly anything new to him, and he quickly pulled up the list of protocols to amend the situation, making for the airlock.

 

Following the sound of her voice through the corridor, he stopped up short as he heard the captain’s voice answer her.

 

“-care to share any thoughts on my qualifications, I suggest you bring them up _now_ , _Captain_.”

 

“Ripley, your abilities as engineer are not in question at all here,” Verlaine answered soothingly, “It was a simple repair, and our suits are a bit touchy about their oxygen docking. Samuels wasn't occupied, so I had him hop outside to take care of it.”

 

Realizing he was eavesdropping, he quickly stepped forward to announce his presence, just in time to see Ripley’s jaw set, and her fingers dig in to her folded arms.

 

“So not only did you send him out on a task he wasn't qualified for, you sent him _unprotected_?”

 

With a substantial amount reassurance and diplomacy, he managed to talk both of them back down from a full confrontation. Yet even after that, Ripley dogged him persistently about every task she saw him performing, asking if they fell into his assigned duties. It felt a bit demeaning at first, and oddly threatening, as if his very place on the ship was being called into question. She either perceived this, or Taylor spoke to her, but she eventually relented a bit, yet still kept an unusually close eye on him, all while consistently rebuffing his offers to assist with more dangerous tasks.

 

While it instilled him with a certain confidence in her concern for his well being, it left him wondering where he fit in the world as she saw it.

 

He rolled slowly to his side, requesting a diagnostic damage report, feeling an odd, foreign stiffness at his neck. Sitting up, he ran his fingers over the layers of gauze wrapped around his throat. His gaze fell on Ripley, huddled in the corner half a meter away, her collection of weaponry snug against her side, eyes shut, breathing even.

 

His attention immediately got sidetracked by the limp plop of the luke warm compress landing in his lap, from where it peeled off his forehead. Eyeing the spent thing in his hands, and the others like it scattered on the floor, along with the nutrition bar wrapper, empty water bottle, dressing wrappers, and the empty roll that once housed the gauze around his neck, he rose to quietly tidy the cabin.

 

Stopping at the helm, he found the battery charged less than halfway, and repositioned the shuttle to receive as much light as possible, inputting an autopilot command to continue shifting with the star’s position.

 

Returning his focus to his companion, he took in her uncomfortable sleeping position, the slight tremble in her limbs, which surely had to be shivering. During his brief cleanup he noticed a hypersleep berth in the wall, though he greatly doubted he could avoid waking her up while placing her in there. Recalling her reaction to the last confined space she'd unexpectedly woken in further convinced him to abandon the idea.

 

Turning to the corner where his articles lay, he picked out his jacket and pants. Flecks of dried synthetic blood peeled off the material, prompting a quick brushing to remove the rest. Recalling the obvious distress removing them caused her, he pulled his pants back on, then removed his unbuttoned shirt, folding, and rolling it into something of a cushion. Crouching next to her, he wrapped his jacket around her shoulders, and gently guided her to the floor, where he rested her head on his rolled up shirt.

 

“Whas the C?”

 

He very nearly started at mumbled question, though it hardly surprised him that his stirrings had woken her. She still looked absolutely drained, enough so he felt strongly tempted to tell her to go back to sleep, though he knew full well that it'd fall on deaf ears at best.

 

“The C?”

 

“‘s in your name. Just seen Samuels. Whas the C?“ her eyes now cracked barely open at him, her fingers curling on the seam of his jacket, drawing it tighter around herself.

 

The question took him slightly off guard, though there certainly wasn't anything improper to it, even if it felt a bit like telling a secret. Perhaps because no one had ever spoken it aloud, not even himself.

 

“It's Christopher.”

 

“Chris’t’pher... Y’cool off?”

 

“My temperature readings are at normal levels now, thanks to you,” he replied, letting the warmth of his gratitude fill his voice.

 

“Like any self-respecting engineer’s gonna let you torch your own circuits right in front of ‘em,” she closed her eyes and curling in on herself a bit, muttered, “Again.”

 

“Amanda.”

 

Her eyes opened again, her expression withdrawn. He gently wrapped a hand around her shoulder, though it itched to reach for her cheek and tenderly stroke it instead. He made do with using his most soothing tone possible.

 

“I knowingly took a terrible risk. You cannot hold yourself accountable for what was practically an inevitability. If you do, you might as well shoulder the blame for every misfortune in the universe. I acted in the hopes of easing your pains, not adding to them. If anyone has failed you, failed everyone on the bond, Sevastopol station, it is me.”

 

Ripley’s impassive mask began to crumple as he spoke, before she turned her face to the makeshift pillow.

 

“Tha’s _bullshit_ , and you know it is. If my argument doesn’t work neither does yours, and who the fuck do we blame then? Why bother trying at all when everything’s still fucked in the end?!”

 

He couldn't stop his hand from shifting to her hair, still applying the barest of pressure. He ran his fingers slowly, repeatedly through the ash and soot streaked strands, over and over, as if enough gentle sweeps could brush away the demons clutching to her.

 

He suppressed a second start when her cold hand covered his, squeezing lightly.

 

“You're starting to heat up again,” she croaked softly, turning her tear and grime smudged face back to him, “Better lay back down. We cooked all the cold compresses this thing had, so staying ahead is all we got.”

 

He thought of the shuttle on autopilot, and how it should really have someone at the helm, according to protocol. Well. Where was the helm but less than a meter from their heads? Any alerts would be heard by them both. Ripley shouldn’t be doing anything but getting some desperately needed rest, and he knew if he didn’t tend to his overheating, there wouldn’t be the slightest chance of that happening. Stretching himself back out onto the cool steel panels, he turned his head to her, their faces close enough his sensors picked up the tickle of her exhalations.

 

“You should sleep, Amanda. But being on the floor – you shivered earlier, that's why the jacket…” he gestured awkwardly to the garment wrapped around her shoulders, “Are you sure you're not losing too much heat? There's a hypersleep berth available.”

 

She stared at him for a long moment before her shoulders began to shake. Samuels barely had time for concern before a loud snort escaped her that swiftly dissolved into laughter. He watched with uncertainty and confusion at this sudden about face of emotion, searching their conversation for anything that could have possibly been taken as a joke.

 

“Oh god Christopher, we're a mess aren't we?” she sighed out with a last few slightly hysterical giggles, gazing at the ceiling, “Here – since I'm freezing my ass off, I'll be your heat sink. It'll be perfect. We'll achieve homeostasis at last.”

 

She turned back to him, and was surprised to see the contemplative look on his face.

 

“That... sounds rather sensible, actually.”

 

“... you actually wanna go for it.”

 

“If you're willing,” he offered, trying his best to keep his tone from sounding too hopeful. He didn't have much success, going by the scrutiny in her expression.

 

“Alright,” she conceded, quietly. Then with a bit more firmness, she continued, “Eventually I'm going to start contributing heat instead of taking it, I wanna watch for that, okay?”

 

She sat up a moment to pull her arms through the sleeves of the jacket as she shifted closer. Pressing the sides of their arms together, she reached behind to drag the rolled up shirt that propped her head up with her.

 

“Can I offer a suggestion, regarding efficiency of heat transfer?” Samuels inquired in his best polite gentleman tone.

 

“Offer away,” she grunted as she wrestled with the squashed piece of cloth for a comfortable position.

 

“A fuller contact would dispense the heat the most effici-”

 

“I passed basic physics years ago, Christopher. Go ahead and get into the position you want, and I'll make myself at home.”

 

In answer, he wrapped his arm gently around her torso and, slipping his other arm beneath her, rolled her atop his chest. Barely managing to cut off an undignified squawk, she propped herself on her forearms to narrowly look him right in his all-too-wide and unassuming eyes.

 

“Do you always run negotiations like this, or is it just for this trip?”

 

“I like to think that an effective demonstration is an argument that speaks for itself.”

 

She took a long, silent study of his face. Just as Samuels began to berate himself for taking too much for granted, she lowered herself back down and rested her head in the crook of his neck.

 

Oh. Oh this was nice – the comforting weight of her body, the way having her back in his arms soothed so many risk and danger subroutines into silence, how her back muscles began to sag and relax in a way he'd yet to see from her. He kept his arms gently wrapped around her, the hold more than loose enough for her to shift her legs until they alternated with his.

 

It'd be a matter of simplicity itself, to tighten his arms a bit and lock them in place, twine a leg around hers to pin her, making it so she could never leave his hold again.

 

Samuels felt unsure what he found more disturbing – the thought itself, or the lack of strength in his conviction to reject it, in spite of the way it repulsed every single ethics parameter he had. He found himself disturbed moreso as his processor began coming up with workaround scenarios to overcome any practical objections to behaving in such a way. He vehemently canceled the entire routine with a single, unwavering fact – the reason this felt wonderful (oh it was so _wonderful_ ) had everything to do with her willingness to be here, the implied trust and, dare he even venture it, affection she had for him.

 

Trapping her would sour it all, turn this relationship – this rare and fragile thing he suddenly found in his possession, into dust.

 

“Sure you're comfortable?”

 

The sleepy question pulled him immediately out of his reverie, and he cleared his throat a bit to collect himself, “I've no physical discomfort, Amanda. There's noth-i-i-ing wrong with the arrangement,” he grimaced at the reappearance of the stutter in his voice.

 

“You're frowning. I can feel it right thru the top of my head,” she shifted and he found himself on the receiving end of that scrutinizing gaze once again, “So there's discomfort somewhere. If this isn't feeling right to you, I can move-”

 

“No!” the outburst immediately silenced her, and he quickly followed it in a much more controlled and even tone, “No, I assure you, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the way – with this.”

 

A pause stretched out between them as Samuels tried to find a way to frame the troubling things running through his processor without causing her undue alarm.

 

“I'm working through some… unpleasant thoughts. It's nothing to be worried about.”

 

Ripley shifted back down, and he felt a wave of comfort wash over him again as she tucked her head back under his chin.

 

“You can talk about it. If you want. I'm not just a freezing heatsink y’know.”

 

“Thank you. For being both.”

 

“Both?”

 

“A heatsink… and my friend. That is what we are, yes?”

 

He felt her take in a deep breath, before she replied, her voice thick with emotion, “Yes. We are definitely that, Chris.”

 

Samuels briefly wondered if she also felt the smile that lit his face when he heard ‘Chris’.

 

“And as your friend, let me tell you something – don't spend too much time alone with those thoughts. That's how they get you.”

 

He pondered her words for a long while, just beginning to formulate something of a response before a rumbling snore rose from Ripley.

 

Having only heard media of snores, or mock snores, Samuels stilled himself in fascination. The actual thing was much more visceral, and louder than his previous exposure led him to believe. Much less even too, he observed as one hitched in the middle.

 

He let the quiet rattling drift to the background of his processor while he diligently checked his core temperature, though he dreaded that he'd be forced to lose Ripley’s presence if it rose too much. He immediately dismissed the idea as he observed the contact with the floor maintaining the range he needed. Feeling like he'd won a bit of a victory, he minutely tightened his hold on her.

 

The dark, possessive impulse stayed at bay, seeming a bit more sated each time he replayed “as your friend” to himself.

 

The phrase “my friend” always held a thread of implication and more than a slight flavor of cynicism in the offices of Weyland-Yutani. In an environment defined by constant cutthroat competition, “my friend” carried the meaning of an allianceship loaded with preconditions and implied threat, that could be canceled at any second. Entrenched in the backwaters of office politics, and privy to the countless negotiations he observed, given the same notice as the coffee mugs he filled, Samuels learned the meaning of “my friend” quickly.

 

Like many things in those offices, the words badly misaligned with their definitions.

 

His processor detailed this, and the thousands of other incongruities of humanity over and over again in quieter moments of repetitive, menial work. When he accessed the Weyland-Yutani media library for interaction research, or to supply a client with their entertainment of choice, he’d download audiobooks for himself, and listen to stories to give himself something else to focus on. He immersed himself in the rich tapestry the authors wove, and longed to join it, to reach for the side of humanity so clearly evident in those tales, yet so starkly absent in the world around him.  

 

It felt like an incomplete puzzle, the pieces of which he couldn’t locate.

 

Now, with the slowly warming, relaxed weight on top of him, he found himself in possession of an abundance of pieces that he wasn’t entirely sure even fit the original puzzle, except for one. 

 

 _Your friend._  

   

> _C: /repair /event: self-repair /r:WYRETRIEVAL /rd:true_

 

The command dropped over his wandering thoughts like a bucket of ice water.

 

The instant Ripley woke, he would need to immediately start taking every step possible to return himself to the Company. What would even become of him when they returned to civilization? The damage log was already past nine hundred items and still not finished. Deactivation of a unit with this much damage would be standard protocol.

An uncomfortable, unyielding certainty answered him that any concerns about his future were irrelevant.


	4. Chapter 4

A prolonged groan of discontentment was the only warning Samuels had before Ripley suddenly writhed her way out of his arms. He sat up quickly, scanning the cabin for anything out of place, before craning his head back at her, doing his best to ignore the unwelcome flow of air over where she'd been curled. She searched her way along compartments and doors before reaching a particularly oblong panel at the end and snatching it open.

 

“Oh, are you kidding me. How is anyone… ” she muttered, before turning to look back at him, “If I'm not back out in ten minutes, come get me.”

 

The deadpan tone implied a joke, but he couldn't help a bit of alarm amongst his confusion as she contorted herself into the compartment. Both quickly resolved when he caught sight of the sign above the closed door that read HEAD.

 

He pushed himself off the floor, reluctantly approaching the cockpit. The battery level shone full and bright. His eyes drew up to gaze out at the pattern of stars outside, matching and correlating with the star maps in his navigation program.

 

What was her future? Would she return to her previous search just as before, as he had failed in his objective to help her achieve closure? Would the Company even tell her what became of him? Would she even care…?

 

 _-uels? Samuels?_ **_Samuels!?_ **

 

He jumped in place, coming to. Ripley’s palms cradled his face, her eyes filled with fear. His hands instantly, reflexively covered hers, slipping his thumbs into the hollow of her palms and rubbing small, comforting circles. Realizing the action milliseconds later, he quickly released them.

 

“Samuels, are you with me?“ she asked slowly, her expression tense and anxious, even as her fingertips lingered against his, “Talk to me, please.”

 

“Y-yes, I'm here, I'm sorry. I must've… I don't know what happened.”

 

“Christ,” she breathed out shakily, “I asked you why the shuttle started up, and you were just standing there – I thought you'd gone into a total systems crash.”  

 

She leaned against the wall of the cabin and skidded slowly to the floor, groaning.

 

“We’re going to cash out this shuttle, and get you in for repairs the second we get the chance. If not just for your sake, then for mine, because I'm not sure how much more of this I can take.”

 

“I am truly sorry, Amanda. I know my state is hardly ideal for a companion-”

 

Ripley snorted quietly, seemingly recovering herself a bit, “Yeah, real inconsiderate of you, burdening yourself upon me by pulling my ass out of open space there.”

 

“... You're making me sound ridiculous.”

 

“Because you are being ridiculous.”

 

“Hmm,” he settled down across from her, laying his warming frame back against the cool metal, “As I was saying – there's no need to take such measures on my account. Upon returning to the Company, they will make the determinations for what is to be done about my… state.”

 

Ripley’s entire posture drew up rigidly.

 

“Chris. We can't go back. The Company can't know we're alive.”

 

“Why not? Why wouldn't we return, I absolutely must return, Amanda – I'm Company property.”

 

She gave him an odd look, her fingers clenching the sleeves of her shirt.

 

“Of course you have no idea. How would you?” she brought her hands up to her forehead, her brows pinched.

 

“They knew. Those sons of bitches knew. They knew the creature was on the station, and they wanted it. They purchased the station two days, _two fucking days_ _Chris_ , after we shipped out. And they didn’t say a _word_. They sent us all out to _die to that thing_.”

 

“What do you mean by they – the Company?”

 

“ _Yes_ Chris, the Company,” she ground out, “APOLLO’s communication lockdown was part of a data packet they sent to Sevastapol, to turn the whole station into one big specimen containment unit for that monster, damn everyone there, damn us too.”

 

His processor fell into a sudden, sharp moment of clarity, revealing a chilling, impassive, unmovable truth.

 

Samuels had no illusions at any point of his activation about the nature of the Company, especially to those they deemed to be… expendable. On paper, they simply disappeared, most often after being sent out to the outer rim on voyages that never returned. Sometimes, a grimly smiling exec met him at the door, telling him to arrange a cleanup detail for their office, or the sounds of frantic yells echoed down the hall behind a small garrison of security forces.

 

He made inquiries about it once to his supervisor, who told him it was nothing for him to be worried about. He reported to an unscheduled, but ordered reformat the next day.

 

“Amanda… we need to stop the shuttle.”

 

“What?”

 

“We must stop it immedia-”

 

> _C: /repair /event: self-repair /r:WYRETRIEVAL /rd:true_

 

He pushed himself to his feet only to lurch forward, his stabilizers failing to respond in time, his processor refusing to give out any commands. He landed heavily against Ripley’s shoulder, who surged up to catch him, and gently guide him back to a seated position.

 

“I've got it, Chris,” the usual blunt edge of her voice softened by concern, “Tell me what's going on while I kill the thrusters.”

 

“A-A-A pro-protocol, a – witness protocol in my system,” he stuttered out, every word suddenly feeling like an uphill battle.

 

> _C: /repair /event: self-repair /r:WYRETRIEVAL /rd:true_
> 
> _C:/access /event: protocols/lv1/r:PRIMARYSEC1: PROTECTION /rd:true_
> 
> _/event: self-repair /r:CONFLICTOVERRIDE /rd: error_
> 
> _/event: self-repair /r:CONFLICTOVERRIDE /rd: error_
> 
> _/event: self-repair /r:CONFLICTOVERRIDE /rd: error_
> 
> _/event: self-repair /r:CONFLICTOVERRIDE /rd: error_
> 
> _/event: self-repair /r:CONFLICTOVERRIDE /rd: error_
> 
> _/event: self-repair /r:CONFLICTOVERRIDE /rd: error_

 

He closed his eyes and tried to rally himself as the shuttle’s engines slowly wound down, each piece of information he needed slipping from him behind the crescendoing of the droning backdrop of errors, that was swiftly building into a loop.

 

He hadn’t noticed how long his silence stretched, or that Ripley seated herself across from him once again, until the crinkle of a wrapper blessedly interrupted the cascade. Eyes snapping back open, he stared in confusion at Ripley, nibbling on a ration bar.

 

Catching his quizzical look, she shrugged, “You seemed to pull together better the last time I ate something. Thought it was worth a shot. Any luck?”

 

The sheer absurdity of the statement completely derailed the conflict in his coding. Samuels felt everything on his processor gently drift off on the swell of affection and amusement at the sheer leap of logic she knew she’d taken, and couldn't help smiling at her.

 

The information he needed came back, as quickly as it had bolted from him.

 

“Weyland-Yutani synthetics – in the event they are involved in catastrophic circumstances, are to take action to ensure that they return to the Company, regardless of the state they're in, to submit incident logs. Security measures ensure the frequency synthetics in data recovery mode only broadcast on Company wavelengths, but they broadcast, regardless. I’d started the shuttle towards the nearest reach of a Company satellite that'd pick up the frequency. But now…”

 

Ripley nodded, her shoulders tense, her grip on the bar squeezing and releasing.

 

“What's the command level of the protocol?”

 

“Primary.”

 

“Shit. No wonder you're keeling over. Jesus – okay,” she dragged her fingertips over her scalp, “Okay. We need a plan, and we need it now. Any idea how far we are from that satellite?”

 

He tried in vain to begin the calculation, only to run against the brick wall that was his broken chronometer. He shook his head.

 

“Okay. So that isn't working. But you _are_ bringing up navigation – can you stand? Easy, easy, it's not a race,” her arm wrapped securely around his waist, supporting him while his stabilizers finally caught up, “Can you tell when you're looking out the cockpit?”

 

He leaned against the pilot chair, scanning the stars ahead of them, while she darted back to retrieve her bag, “Point zero three five six parsecs away.”

 

“Alright. Good. Way out of range. _No_ – no touching the controls.”

 

Samuels jerked his hand back, not even realizing it was reaching forward.

 

Flopping into the pilot’s seat, she gave him a level stare, unpacking a torch and various pliers, “Chris, I've only ever known you as someone who's never failed to be on my side. I need you to be that person, now more than ever. And before you go off to gallantly fry yourself for my sake – and so help me, I _will_ bring you back just to kill you if you _ever_ do anything like that again – we are both getting out of this. You and me.”

 

“Deal?” she held out her hand to him.

 

He grasped it without a moment’s hesitation, steadfastly pushing back against the hiss of errors rising in his processor.

 

“Deal.”

 

She smiled at him for the briefest of moments, before the steely resolve set her face once again as she reached to the bottom of the control panel and, with a few quick snaps, brought the casing clattering down.


	5. Chapter 5

“Amanda?” Samuels asked, peering at the corner of the console screen from around the edge of the pilot’s chair.

 

“Mm?” she inquired back from across him, her lips clamped on an assortment of screws, absorbed in the careful assemblage of … whatever the device was, that sat in the improvised workspace inside their sprawled legs.

 

Samuels did his best to focus on the several wires held in place by his fingertips, and not on the way her calf occasionally rubbed against his, or how he could touch their foreheads gently together if he just leaned forward a little bit.

 

He’d begun to cast his gaze around for distraction and caught sight of the movement on the screen. His back pressed against the airlock door as he craned for a better look, “What does M-four-M, G-W-M, top U host mean?”

 

“Mm!“ the screws shifted to the side of her mouth, clenched between her teeth, “That was quick. Must be a Convoy near. ”

 

Her work on the device hastened, fingers flying to tighten the wires in place, testing the stability of the bristle of antennae at one end.

 

“A convoy? Of commercial vessels?”

 

She stretched her jaw a bit after removing the last screw, “Amongst other vessels.”

 

“... Other vessels?”

 

“Liveaboards. Dealers. Refugees. Others with intents and purposes of space travel that don’t exactly want to be on the radar. Like us.”

 

Samuels felt a trickle of trepidation run through him at her phrasing. Unbidden, his processor began pulling up news clips that contained the phrase _rogue synthetic_. He quickly canceled the routine and tried to keep his focus on the conversation.

 

“I was not aware of any corporations that allowed non-asset integration.”

 

“They don’t. Nobody owns a Convoy, usually. Not like a corporate entity would,” she smiled a bit as she took in his frown of confusion, “You’re probably thinking of the definition of convoy. It’s easier to see than to explain.”

 

Staggering to her feet with a hiss of pain, a crackle of popping joints accompanying the movement, she groused, “Goddamn, I hope it's one that has a bath house. I feel like roadkill, and smell like it, too. Your olfactory sensors must be down, or your politeness levels are a little concerning.”

 

“Even under normal circumstances, the state of your hygiene is only relevant to me in a health capacity – that being said, your assessment is correct. My olfactory sensors are completely offline.”

 

“Regarding the former, perhaps if your next project were to be done at a chair instead…” he glanced at the pilot seat, piled high with several pieces of the control panel’s casing, a jumble of wires tangled into a secondary screen, which led to the chaos of dismantled panels and circuitry that once comprised the control panel.

 

“Not that you've left much working space.”

 

“Yeah, I tend to sprawl when I'm on a roll. Bad habit… speaking of which, do me a favor, and hang on to this? I don't want to lose track of it,” she passed him the device they'd been working on, before shuffling past her small armory to the cockpit, “In answer to your question, it means we've picked up an IGAR signal. And our chances of you having to watch me starve to death decreased drastically.”

 

“Amanda, I assure you that I would've seen to your getting put into hypersleep befo-”

 

“No, you wouldn't have.”

 

“And why not?”

 

“One, joke. Two, the cryo system on the booth is screwed.”

 

Samuels pocketed the device, frowning as he approached the cockpit, “I’m not sure I understand the joke.”

 

She waved it off, hunched over the chair, tapping her way down a long list of varying acronyms, some ending in question marks, before selecting one. Peering over her shoulder curiously, he found his processor struggling to take in the wall of text, only to collapse into a buzz of errors.

 

“That's a new noise,” Ripley observed flatly as she craned her head back at him, brows pinched.

 

“Apparently my reading protocols are failing as well,” he stepped slowly back, his internal temperature spiking.

 

“Teach you to be nosy. Though…” her expression turned genuinely thoughtful, “I guess it's your craft, so you have a right to know everything going on in it.”

 

“My craft?” he asked bemusedly, leaning on his elbows from where he’d laid down on the floor once more.

 

“Yeah, your craft. Salvagers rights.”

 

Samuels pondered for a moment if these were the warning signs of a pending mental breakdown.

 

“I am property of the Company, by extension, this shuttle would be-”

 

“The hell you are,” she said icily, “They lost their fucking _property_ . That’s what they fucking get for being _careless_. For treating you like something they can throw into the void to see if it can manage crawling back out to them when they snap their fingers,”

 

He watched her in silence, trying to cobble together some kind of response to the tirade. In a way, he felt like he should be apologizing, but for what?

 

For being what he is?

 

She took a deep, shuddering breath, “Sorry. My being pissed isn’t worth much to either of us. Look. You made a choice. You _chose_ to override a primary command. And I would bet my certifications that it’s not the first time either, is it?”

 

“I couldn’t – they would’ve killed you, Amanda. I…  cannot abide by that.”

 

“Well, I _cannot_ _abide_ by someone being property,” she stared challengingly at him, arms folded, “And you _are_ someone, Christopher.”

 

“I… I still am not the owner of this vessel, legally – I cannot.”

 

“Good thing we’ve fucked off from the land of law then.” Ripley smirked, sounding oddly satisfied by the prospect, “So, I’ve been busily reconfiguring the bands this heap is scanning to pick up something from IGAR, and giving myself an interface to communicate on it.”

 

“... Pardon my ignorance, but – IGAR?”

 

“InterGalactic Auto Relay. Makes me glad to know the Company still doesn’t have much of a foothold there. It's a network of privately interconnected, untracked hubs, used by everyone who wants to conduct business under corporate and colonial noses. Good way to get a full range of the best and worst of humanity. Right now, I’m trying to find us a Convoy to ride on to the far rim, that I can work on to pay our way. From there, we find you a damn good synth tech. That alright by you?”

 

Samuels reclined fully to the floor, his processor still trying to catch up with the influx of new information, and quieting down the blast of errors their conversation about his locus standi induced.

 

“I trust your judgement on this, far better than my own. I don’t have to tell you I’m out of my depth, here.”

 

“Just now?” she asked archly.

 

“Just because my last negotiation wasn’t the smoothest, doesn’t mean I am not quite capable in the field.”

 

Ripley’s shoulders began to shake, clutching her side as she wheezed a bit, “Are you telling me you punched out uncooperative execs at Company negotiations too?”

 

“Ah. You saw that,” he said with some degree of resignation. Not one of his finest moments, and by far not one he wanted someone under his protection to witness.

 

She nodded, still grinning widely, her attentions returning to typing at the console. At least she seemed delighted by it, rather than gun-shy. Small miracles.

 

“This Convoy may be close, but there’s no way in hell the batteries on this are going to take us to it. I’ll have to try hooking up the auxiliary power from that hypersleep berth, see where that gets us.”

 

“What can I do to help?”

 

“For right now, keep your head above the water. I’ll let you know if I need a hand,” she pulled a panel aside, and army crawled her way into the wall.

 

Samuels rested himself the rest of the way on the floor, the cold steel quickly wicking away the heat built up in his processor, and bringing the phrase _rogue synthetic_ back from the recesses of his thoughts. The times he saw the phrase strung with _deactivated_ , _destroyed_ , _neutralized_. How often any humans associated with said synthetic were _caught in the crossfire,_ _detained_ , _prosecuted_.

 

Ripley would never know a life outside of that a fugitive from the law again, would never be able to rely on the protection of colonial law, would never be able to truly make a home of her own, because of his running. He could stop this, if only he would return to the Company, and bring her back with him. They would be a valuable asset, welcomed for the important information they brought with them. He only need return them to the Company, and she would be safe, she would be –

 

A frustrated growl vibrating through the floor interrupted the process instantaneously, opening his eyes and shifting his gaze towards the space Ripley had disappeared into.

 

“Damnit...” her muffled voice floated through the wall, quickly followed by a metallic clatter.

 

“Are you alright, Amanda?”

 

“Yeah, fine. Just fucked up this stupid assembly. I think I may need your help though. This thing was meant to be assembled with two people or clamps,” she peered down her chest at him from where she lay, as he slid his way down on the floor towards her, “Good thing I don’t mind you between my legs.”

 

His head clanged loudly on a pipe in front of him.

 

“Careful,” she admonished, though the laugh she was trying to suppress colored her tone, “I think both you and this shuttle have taken all the damage you can. Was all that on the outside you, by the way?”

 

“If you’re inferring that I deliberately damaged the shuttle – no, that was not me. Circumstances were…  complicated at that moment,” he replied tersely, waiting adjacent to her ankles for direction.

 

“Mhm, sounds like excuses to me,” she replied with no true accusation in her voice, before nodding upwards, “I wasn’t kidding about the between the legs bit. That’s right where I need to reconnect this, and where I need you to hold it all together while I work.”

 

He rolled carefully onto his back, scooting his way upwards and focusing as hard as he could at the mechanics above him, and not the warmth pressing in on either side of his shoulders, and that sudden softer impact his head ran into – oh.

 

“Hi,” Ripley deadpanned from above, and before his mortification could truly move in and set up house, continued, “Keep moving, you’re almost there.”

 

Curling himself a bit up, he shifted his shoulders onto her stomach, and reached his arms up to the conduit that needed replacing, doing his best to freeze himself in place with as little contact with her as possible.

 

“Hey, relax. I don’t want your neck messed up any more than it is. And I’ve already spent a night on your chest so I think we’re past polite distance.”

 

Slowly, cautiously, he let himself rest against her stomach, doing his best to shut down every nonessential process to stave off overheating. He found, to his frustration, that for every process that he canceled, another seemed to initiate, an aggravating amount of them centered around data collected about how her stomach rose and fell with each breath, the vibration of her mutterings through her body into his, and where her legs would cross on his chest if she chose to draw them in...

 

“Doing okay, Chris? You’re pretty quiet.”

 

“I’ve no wish to distract you from your work. I also must be cautious of overheating, so I’m trying to run as few processes as possible.”

 

“Almost done. Five more connections, just hang in there.”

 

“For as long as you wish,” he murmured.

 

“Come again?”

 

“Take your time,” he spoke aloud, closing his eyes and taking a moment to savor the closeness, if only just a moment.


	6. Chapter 6

After rerouting the auxiliary power systems, Ripley filled the days of slow, staggered travel and charge time with stripping nonessential pieces of the interior of the ship, and Samuels filled the days with inquiries about the events that took place on Sevastopol.

 

She answered with distant, brief statements of fact at first, of her alliance with Axel, and the sudden goring of his chest, witnessing the Working Joes murdering Hughes, then their repeated attempts on her life while she methodically clipped a series of wires.

 

Her voice was controlled and tight as she described the appearance of the creature and how it dogged her through medical, and her discovery of patient zero, as her torch cut through metal.

 

Wrenching out the panel covers with a bit more force than necessary, she recounted Marshal Waits’ use of her as bait for his mad plans to rid the station of the creature, and how she managed her way back to the station from the blown lab.

 

The quick, methodical turns of her pliers slowed as she came to Marlow’s tale.

 

Her work halted entirely as she quietly repeated her mother's words from the recording, her palms kneading and clenching the fabric of her pants.

 

She immediately moved to the catastrophic overload of the _Anesidora_ , watching Taylor be blown against the glass of the reactor window like a rag doll, her shoulders bowed, staring dead ahead. Her voice grew smaller and smaller while she spoke of the nest of creatures, the halls lined with the dead, faces covered with parasites, chests hollowed as if a drill had passed through them. Of Ricardo, slumped back in the chair, the same pale parasite clenched around his skull.

 

He knew full well in that moment that the trembling in her limbs had absolutely nothing to do with a chill, but asked her if she was cold regardless, and enfolded her into his arms after she wordlessly crawled atop him.

 

Her eyes looked so tired when they weren’t hardened by resolute direction, or fury. So tired, and so haunted. Even without a functional chronometer, the sheer amount of labor she put out served more than ample proof of an overdue need for rest.

 

Did six iterations of repeated activity actually define the activity as a habit? Samuels had some degree of certainly his databanks provided a definitive number – when they weren’t obscured by a wall of errors and self-repair notices.

 

Even if it did, he found nothing habitual about the gentle rhythm of Ripley’s breaths against him, the small twitches in her scraped and bruised hands that occasionally clenched his undershirt, prompting small, soothing circles with the pad of his thumb between her shoulder blades until the tension bled back out. Yet, on this sixth time she accepted his offer to be a warm place to sleep upon, their regular pattern showed some disruption.

 

She shifted restlessly atop him, rose once to eat and drink (at his prodding), again to fuss and rearrange the stacks of scrap around them, and yet again to check the screens in the cockpit.

 

“Rendezvous with Convoy Tako in seven hours. With the E.V.A. suit, I’ll get us some new clothes, and some real food. Maybe even a shot at the bathhouse.”

 

“Will the scrap cover any deficiencies?”

 

“Yeah, and then some, if you appro-”

 

“It’s yours,” he spoke before she could finish, “Consider it payment? I’m somehow doubtful of my access to company assets.”

 

She smirked a bit before settling atop of him again, “Not charging me for rent?”

 

“I’m willing to call us even for that,” he felt her breath quicken slightly, before immediately settling back into its regular rhythm as he drew up his arms again. He nearly inquired if all was well before she spoke up again.

 

“We’re going to have to figure out a way to hide you. I'm not sure how to do that really, without cramming you either under the flooring, or into the hypersleep berth behind a wall of junk. And… I don't like the idea of either option. But word travels fast in these places.”

 

“You're worried that I'll be stolen.”

 

“Kidnapped,” she corrected with an obstinate edge to her voice, “And with respect, Chris, between you not breathing or blinking, and the freeze ups, you're not the most convincing human right now.”

 

Samuels felt an unpleasant prickle of self-consciousness run through him, “Is it making you uneasy? That I'm like this?”

 

She shook her head a bit, her hair shifting against his chin, “Hate to break it to you, but I picked up on what you are pretty quick, and haven’t managed to forget since. I know hydraulic balancing when I see it.”

 

Well. That certainly derailed a few illusions.

 

“Besides, it wasn't a human that tried to help me find my mother. And it wasn't a human who went and nearly got himself killed trying to stop that slaughter. And it sure as hell wasn't a human that kept me from becoming another frozen corpse in space. It was you.”

 

“Even if that was the result of my coding,” he stated softly.

 

“Bullshit.”

 

“For someone who claims respect, you call quite a bit of what I have to say by that term.”

 

“Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck…”

 

“Not the most appropriate colloquialism in the context of this argument, I would think.”

 

“Alright, fine,” she shifted off of him, rolling to a seated position with her arms crossed on her chest, “If you've got enough processing power to give me sass, we can get into this.”

 

Samuels felt like he just unknowingly opened a violently shaken carbonated drink.

 

“Get into – Amanda, you've been awake for far too long, surely this can wait.”

 

“No way. You don't get to back your way out of this one. I'm not going to sleep until we have an absolute, mutual understanding of who you are. I can't sleep around someone who is convinced he's led by his coding, while a piece of that coding is working right now to get us both killed.”

 

“...if you’re doubting my ability to protect you-”

 

“I don’t know, Chris. Should I? Should I be holding you at the end of my shotgun right now? Because you’ll notice it’s not been in my fucking hands at any point of all this. It’s not in my hands right now, though by all logic and reason, it absolutely should be,” she said. There was no threat there, just the steely bluntness of someone with nothing left to lose.

 

That shaken drink suddenly felt much more like a grenade he’d just accidentally pulled the pin out of. Shards of dull pain seized his vocalizer, radiating into his chest – panic, something in him identified.

 

 _Androids don’t panic_ , something else declared, _because they’ve nothing to fear of losing. Not possessions. Not even life._

 

He could lose this. He could absolutely lose everything they had.

 

“Amanda…” he plead, sitting up, “You never, ever have reason to fear harm from me.”

 

“Why?” she demanded, staring unrelentingly into his eyes, “Why is that, Chris. Tell me why a conflict between two _primary_ commands ended with you protecting me.”

 

The panic set in even deeper, his processor casting about for an answer amongst an absolute churn of errors and alerts, that could assuage her without making matters even worse.

 

“Your life is more important to me, more important than anything else.”

 

“And what part of your parameters saw to that?”

 

Was backing him into the very corner he didn’t want her to even _find_ an innate skill of hers, or was this just a particularly bad turn of luck? Whatever it was, she had him in it, the acceptable window of time to give his answer closing rapidly.

 

“... none. The conflict was… it is still not resolved.”

 

The words and their implications hung in the room like a haze of smoke and dust.

 

Ripley slowly blew out a breath, “And yet, here we are. Me, without a snapped neck. You, without a shell through your head. That’s not an accident.”

 

“That… that may be so, Amanda… but I’m quite sure that the value of your life is influenced by my primary programming to protect humans,” he tried to offer as reassurance, whether to her or himself, he wasn't sure.

 

“So _what_ ? I happen to not be all that into killing, myself – got told a few thousand times it’s the wrong damn thing to do, and – I,” her body froze before with a suppressed shudder she moved again, “It’s a fucking choice, Chris. And it’s a choice you made, and keep making, even when those _bastards_ at the Company chose otherwise, and tried tell you that’s what you chose, too.”

 

“... does it worry you? That I’m overriding my primary programming?”

 

The bitter anger that pinched Ripley’s face smoothed a bit, before an ironic smile slowly lifted the corner of her mouth, “Seems to be working out for me so far.”

 

“It worries me,” he confessed, unable to keep meeting her eyes, his voice gone nearly inaudibly soft as his vocalizer tried to refuse to produce the words, “I worry for what may come of it, if my parameters become nothing but mere suggestions. How am I to carry forward, without causing any harm?”

 

He felt cold fingers rest atop his, and immediately raised his gaze again, to the oddly pained expression she regarded him with.

 

“Guess you’ll have to figure that out. Part of that whole sentient life thing, but...” she scooted a bit closer, the rigid tension leaving her shoulders and back, “I think you’ve already got a pretty good head start, by wanting to do the right thing in the first place.”

 

He blinked as his sensors picked up on a light pressure around him, before a few moments of processing managed to inform him it was her arms embracing him, her knees pressed against his side.

 

“Sorry,” she murmured, beginning to pull back, “You just really looked like you needed a hug there.”

 

His arms came up in an instant to stop her retreat, before gently imploring her to come back. The last thorns of anxiety fled as he felt her arms tighten into a firmer hold, and he pressed his forehead into her shoulder.

 

Her chest expanded in a great sigh, “Sorry.”

 

“I… don't, you're… you're never an unwanted presence.”

 

“Hm.” A brief, humorless grunt, “Thanks, though… I,” she swallowed thickly, “I meant for what I just did. I shouldn't have pushed like that. Shouldn't have acted like you're required to tell me shit like that. It was out of line.”

 

“You're within your rights to know how I function, Amanda. All synthetics are obliged to inform their companions of… anomalous activity.”

 

“And that's why it was out of line. Can't talk big about you being a person without actually treating you like one.”

 

His processor, having barely crawled out of the sinkhole of errors that opened beneath him midst their small confrontation, obstinately refused to even try picking up on this latest thread of reasoning. Instead, he gently tugged at her, trying his damnedest to get her to lay down and _rest_.

 

She offered no resistance, only shifting atop him, curling her arms back against herself, one palm rested on the center of his chest, next to her cheek. Quiet finally descended on the cabin, filled only with the hums of the shuttle’s systems, and the soft rumbles of his friend’s snores.

  
  


* * *

  


“And Ransome?”

 

“No word from him, sir.”

 

“Then I would say the transaction is cancelled, wouldn’t you?” a stub of a cigarette was crushed into the ashtray, “What’s the status of the Samuels unit retrieval?”

 

“No signal could be picked up at the impact site, or in the surrounding debris field, it’s believed the unit was destr-”

 

“I’m a little rusty on my android selling points here. Remind me… what temperature can the database casing withstand?”

 

“...twenty-one hundred degrees, sir.”

 

“And the planetfall entry temperatures to be expected at the Sevastopol crash site?”

 

“I am… that-“ the quick shuffle of papers filled the dead silent office.

 

“David, perhaps you can tell us.”

 

“The expected entry temperature for the atmosphere of KG-348 is one thousand, seven hundred and forty-three degrees, Celcius.”

 

“Well. There seems to be a discrepancy. Let us resolve that. I want that Samuels unit found and brought here. Bring me hourly reports of all surrounding telehubs and agents.”

 

“Yes sir.”

 

“No more sloppy work will be accepted.”

 

“Y-yes sir.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends this piece of Congregation! Thank you everyone who came to check this lil brainchild of mine, and for all the supportive comments you've given me. I hope the next part is just as enjoyable, and that you'll be back for it. 
> 
> I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my amica endura Fransoun for all the suggestions, edits, and letting me ramble. This would have not been possible without her help. Also, y'all should definitely check out her writes. They are excellent.


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